I ended my last post (Aug 25) by posing a question about why the Grand Jury investigating my parents’ case was so interested in Helene Elitcher’s recollection of the social lives of my parents and their friends: what did this have to do with stealing the secret of the atomic bomb?

Yet another young activist was imprisoned last week and could spend up to 18 months behind bars even though she hasn’t been charged with a crime. 24-year-old Leah-Lynn Plante has been jailed for refusing to answer a grand jury’s questions. Here is a video of Leah making her last statement before her third court date and subsequent jailing, and I’m reprinting the text below. It is a little longer than most of my blog posts, but I think all RFC supporters will want to read it in its entirety. And I add my voice to those chanting, “Fr

The United States in the only nation in the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition that retains a grand jury system. A grand jury is the prosecutor’s tool for investigating what the government deems to be possible criminal activity. Although it has the power to bring criminal indictments as well as to compel people to testify about their activities and those of others in return for a grant of immunity from prosecution, witnesses are not permitted to have their attorneys accompany them into the grand jury room. A witness who flatly refuses to cooperate or to testify after being granted immunity can

Late last week two young Grand Jury resisters were released from the Federal Prison near Seattle, Washington. They had been imprisoned since September for refusing to answer a Grand Jury’s questions. The Grand Jury’s initial charge was to investigate politically motivated vandalism at demonstrations, but it quickly degenerated into a witch hunt designed to terrorize communities of young anarchists in the Pacific Northwest. Supporters have maintained steady pressure for the detainees’ release on both the District Attorney and the Judge who were responsible for the resister’s imprisonment.

Our parents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were executed on June 19, 1953, after being convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. That was the formal legal charge, but in the public’s mind they were executed for providing our archenemy, the Soviet Union, with the ability to destroy our country with atomic bombs. Theirs was the most sensational case of the McCarthy period.

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